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Highly paid academicians, top officials on scofflaw list

Unpaid taxes?

Posted: Saturday, July 03, 2004

By Dick PettysAssociated Press

ATLANTA - The list of more than 20,000 state employees who appear to be tax scofflaws includes highly paid academicians and senior government officials as well as low-wage seasonal employees and part-timers, Revenue Commissioner Bart Graham said Friday.

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One person on the list made more than $250,000 in 2002, he said. Others on the roster include people who were in top policy-making positions of state government. ''It goes all the way to department heads. They're in here, and senior staffers in departments.''

Legislative workers and employees of agencies attached to the governor's office also are on the list, whose existence was disclosed by Graham on Thursday in announcing the results of his department's latest effort to crack down on tax cheats.

The effort involved comparing the names of some 179,000 people who drew state pay in 2002 with tax returns for that year. The agency found that 23,000 of the employees - or 13 percent - failed to file state tax returns.

Graham is keeping the names confidential for now, but urged state department heads in a letter earlier this week to adopt stringent new policies to ensure their workers comply with the law.

He suggested they follow the policy in his agency, where failure to file a tax return results in termination.

The Board of Regents, which pays high dollar salaries to a number of university professors, accounted for many of the highly paid scofflaws, Graham said.

Regents spokesman John Millsaps said, ''The chancellor is taking it very seriously. Once we have a chance to work more closely with the Department of Revenue, we'll have a better idea of the response.''

Systemwide, the university system had a failure-to-file rate of only about 6.1 percent, but some individual colleges had rates approaching 30 percent.

Graham said the Department of Natural Resources has e-mailed its employees with a reminder of their tax obligation. He said he's heard twice from House Speaker Terry Coleman's office about the matter.

Perdue wasn't in office in 2002, the year involved in the study, and those he has chosen to work in the executive branch since taking office in 2003 have been subjected to background checks which would have disclosed unpaid taxes, Graham said.

However, a number of agencies are attached administratively to the governor's office and holdovers from the previous administration had not been screened, he said.

Although Graham refers to those on the list as ''potential delinquents,'' he said he's confident that the results are valid.